Tag: aquariums

The Shinma (“god-demons”) are supernatural creatures that come from a place known as the Darkness, which many of them have escaped from to the bright and warm Earth. It is the fate of Miyu, born of the union of a vampiric Shinma and a mortal human, to be the Guardian who hunts down stray Shinma and returns them to the Darkness. In this she is assisted by her bodyguard, the foreign Shinma called Larva. Separated from her parents by her duties, Miyu yearns to go to the Darkness herself, but cannot do so before returning all the escaped Shinma.

Vampire Princess Miyu was a shoujo horror manga running from 1988-2002, which was turned into two anime adaptations, and had three spin-off manga series. The manga was brought over by Studio Ironcat, but never fully translated, and is now out of print.

Miyu is something of a morally ambiguous character; while she primarily banishes Shinma who are preying on human souls or bodies, she also attacks those that aren’t doing any immediate harm or are even helping humans. Sometimes she seems to enjoy playing with her prey, but can also be taciturn and business-like in her eliminations. And Miyu requires the blood of humans every so often to function. She only takes the blood of volunteers (usually people who’ve suffered great loss but are still aesthetically pleasing), to whom she promises “eternity”–a deathlike coma of endless comforting dreams.

This volume contains three stand-alone stories. In “The Jewel Taken By the Sea”, a young man who loves aquariums sees a mermaid at the aquarium in the new village he’s moved to. But at his school, he meets a girl who looks almost identical to the mermaid, except for clearly being human. She’s obviously got a secret, but is it the one he thinks it is?

“Doll Forest” concerns a small shop that makes traditional Kyoto dolls, some of which look disturbingly like young women who have gone missing in the neighborhood. Miyu investigates–is the monster the creepy old dollmaker, his uncannily handsome son…or something even scarier? This story does include an overweight woman with self-image problems.

“When Birds Cry” is about a homeless man named Tori (“bird”) and his two wards, a bird and a little girl both named Ruri. He’s taking care of the Ruris, but are his motives really benevolent? And if Miyu banishes Tori, who will take care of the little girl? This one has a teen boy who’s interested in Miyu, and not at all understanding the mystic weirdness going on. His intentions are good, but people close to Miyu tend to die.

Interestingly, all three stories wind up being clean-ups from previous banishings that Miyu performed.

The art is light and airy, and can sometimes make it difficult to tell who’s speaking isolated speech bubbles. The mood is less scary than sad, death or banishment is the inevitable outcome. The writing is okay, but sounds many of the same notes repeatedly.

This volume and the other Vampire Princess manga may be difficult to find; the anime is somewhat more available. Recommended to fans of YA vampire stories.

Disclaimer: I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway on the premise that I would review it.

Howard Phillips “H.P.” Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a minor writer of horror fiction in the early 20th Century. But thanks to a gift for purple prose, a strong philosophical unity in his stories’ viewpoints and (most importantly) a willingness to share his ideas, he’s been immensely influential in the development of the horror field. He’s best known for the Cthulhu Mythos, a series of stories involving cosmic “gods” that are implacably hostile to humanity as we know it, not out of malice as such, but because humans are irrelevant to the universe at large.

A number of his stories were set in the Miskatonic Valley region of Massachusetts, a fictional backwater including such shadowed locations as Innsmouth, Dunwich and Arkham. That last one will be familiar to Batman fans.

Which brings us to the book at hand, an anthology of first-person narratives set in the Miskatonic Valley. They range in time period from about the 1890s to the far future, and one is set in an alternate history. As is traditional in Lovecraft-inspired fiction, several of the narrators cannot be telling their stories to any living person, although none of them are quite to the level of that one Lovecraft protagonist who was still writing in his journal even as the monster was actually entering the room. An especially nice touch is that the fictional narrators have their own author bios at the end of the stories.

Some standouts in the anthology include:

“Arkquarium” by Folly Blaine: A high school student working part-time at the Arkham Aquarium tries to impress the girl he likes by sneaking into the locked laboratory section. Turns out there’s a reason no one is supposed to go in there. The protagonist shows some gumption, but isn’t unrealistically competent beyond the average teenager he is.

“The Reservoir” by Brian Hamilton: A direct sequel to Lovecraft’s classic “The Colour Out of Space” which has a microbiologist investigating particles in the water of the title lake. He finds an old well still calling–or is it a hallucination of the deep?

“The Pull of the Sea” by Sean Frost: A ghost learns that not even death can protect you from the worse horrors that come from the ocean. The story carefully sets up rules, then the creatures that break the rules come along.

“The Laughing Book” by Cliff Winnig: A college student studies the title book in the restricted stacks of Miskatonic University. This story is more influenced by Lovecraft’s “Lord Dunsany” period of dark fantasy than his straight-up horror.

The quality of writing is generally good, absent a couple of typos, and the annoying use of phonetic dialect in “Dr. Circe and the Shadow Over Swedish Innsmouth” by Erik Scott de Bie. Horror tends to be subjective as to whether it works for you or not; I found most of the stories nicely creepy, with a couple going a bit too much for the gore for my tastes.

Recommended for fans of the Cthulhu Mythos, and the more literate horror fan in general.